I hear and read plenty of debate on authorship and its validity on influencing search engine ranking. If your not paying attention to this area yet, I suggest you consider it seriously. This post is going to illustrate a vision of authorship and how Google could use it and probably will use it at least in the way I am going to describe it here.

I am trying to think like google does, or what the moral version I tell myself Google is suppose to stand for. Authorship is the next thing to change the value associated with content on the web. Although, lets face it, there are still plenty of shady techniques that are being applied and working, but fortunately I believe authorship will clean house with them.

I want to go on a relative rant for a second so please bare with me.

A couple days back I had an inquiry for my business services. The prospect sounded interesting, so I went to meet this person at his office to discuss what he was looking for. This persons starts the conversation by telling me “you may be a good designer, but I am way more experienced than you in SEO” I was gripping the chair as my ego was screaming inside. It took all that I had in me to hold back from closing my computer and walking out the door. I thought, man this guy maybe the cockiest person I have ever met. Fortunately, or maybe not, a little humility or possibly stupidity settled in and I thought to myself, let me hear him out because maybe he is a guru and I will learn some SEO wisdom.  My steam started to lessen and our dialog continued.

Next, this person goes on to tell me (more like brag about) his 400 real estate websites (all are exact match domains and keyword stuffed pages) and how he gets more leads than any other real estate agency in the area. Sadly enough this person has saturated this area for all real estate terms and gets more traffic and leads than anyone In the real estate industry in this area as a result.  To paint an even clearer picture of the character, he asks me if I use frontpage. (That should say it all) He continues on telling me that he wants our services because his websites are all the same looking and he needs an entirely different

look so he doesn’t get picked up by Google.  Anyway, lacking in humility still myself and wanting to convince myself he was a fraud I went ahead and ask him if he thought he was spamming the search engines. The person went on to tell me (and he seemed to truly believed this) that each page is original content and he was not spamming the search engines. It would have made most sense to laugh inside, but instead i felt sick to my stomach from this person and his seemingly shady ranking techniques. Next, I asked him if he heard of authorship and he said no and really doesn’t worry about that type of stuff.

Then the conscience driving person I am thought, this guy is taking away leads from real people doing good stuff in the area because of his 2003 spamming techniques. I can’t believe this type of stuff still works in Google. I remember doing this stuff in 2003 innocently because it made sense but not in 2013.

Dear Authorship, we are ready for change. I hope you help this real estate area soon because what’s happening here is very unfair and sad for this industry. Unfortunately, this same story happens everywhere still.

So now that I expressed my junk, (thanks for listening to my ranting) here is how I see this authorship bringing value especially here in this situation.

In order, to have solid content that ranks well you will have to have a reputation by others. The person in this story doesn’t have a good reputation online.  Actually, I am not sure the person exists outside of the office.  The person actually didn’t even know how to access their Facebook account.

The great thing about Authorship is that your content will not be the only factor in getting ranked. Your most valuable backlinks will have to come from other reputable authors. This is a very smooth and logical progression by Google. Authorship interconnects it all.  It has signals that gage the way you interact with others, the circles you’re involved with, the quality of circles you’re in, the quality of your content as shared and commented on by others with reputable authorship. If you’re the Author of a site that site becomes valued by you and your influences.  It really moves away from these spamming ways because it becomes based on your reputation and not the number of pages and keywords and links from other sites with lots of relative content, that has links from relative content etc. You have to actually exist and not be just a “domain” with quality keyword optimization, and linking strategies to get the top.  You have to be real.  This is truly beautiful stuff. I am excited about the next phase of SEO.

Okay, so I don’t want to leave you hanging here. Here are some useful posts to help you start to become influential.

I read a sweet post  17 Ways to Go from Insignificant to Significant on Google+ this is a must read.

Furthermore, check out this steller post about the technical aspect written over at SEOMoz How Authorship (and Google+) Will Change Linkbuilding

Lastly, this is not an exact science but it is a smart algorithm to help you get some idea of where your influence is. Check your Klout score to get an idea of your influence level.

What are your thoughts on all this?

•